07/30/07 -- -- - THE
death of a nation is a rare and somber event.
But the vision of a unified, independent
Palestine threatens to be another casualty of a
Hamas-Fatah civil war, stoked by Israel and its
enabling ally the United States.

Last
month’s chaos may mark the beginning of the end
of the Palestinian Authority. That might not be
an altogether unfortunate development for
Palestinians, given US-Israeli programmes of
rendering it nothing more than a quisling regime
to oversee these allies’ utter rejection of an
independent state.

The
events in Gaza took place in a developing
context. In January 2006, Palestinians voted in
a carefully monitored election, pronounced to be
free and fair by international observers,
despite US-Israeli efforts to swing the election
towards their favourite, Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But
Hamas won a surprising victory.

The
punishment of Palestinians for the crime of
voting the wrong way was severe. With US
backing, Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza,
withheld funds it was legally obligated to
transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened
its siege and even cut off the flow of water to
the arid Gaza Strip.

The
United States and Israel made sure that Hamas
would not have a chance to govern. They rejected
Hamas’s call for a long-term cease-fire to allow
for negotiations on a two-state settlement,
along the lines of an international consensus
that Israel and United States have opposed, in
virtual isolation, for more than 30 years, with
rare and temporary departures.

Meanwhile, Israel stepped up its programmes of
annexation, dismemberment and imprisonment of
the shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West
Bank, always with US backing despite occasional
minor complaints, accompanied by the wink of an
eye and munificent funding.

Powers-that-be have a standard operating
procedure for overthrowing an unwanted
government: Arm the military to prepare for a
coup. Israel and its US ally helped arm and
train Fatah to win by force what it lost at the
ballot box. The United States also encouraged
Abbas to amass power in his own hands,
appropriate behaviour in the eyes of Bush
administration advocates of presidential
dictatorship.

The
strategy backfired. Despite the military aid,
Fatah forces in Gaza were defeated last month in
a vicious conflict, which many close observers
describe as a pre-emptive strike targeting
primarily the security forces of the brutal
Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Israel and the
United States quickly moved to turn the outcome
to their benefit. They now have a pretext for
tightening the stranglehold on the people of
Gaza.

‘To
persist with such an approach under present
circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks
destroying an entire Palestinian community that
is an integral part of an ethnic whole,’ writes
international law scholar Richard Falk.

This
worst-case scenario may unfold unless Hamas
meets the three conditions imposed by the
‘international community’ — a technical term
referring to the US government and whoever goes
along with it. For Palestinians to be permitted
to peek out of the walls of their Gaza dungeon,
Hamas must recognise Israel, renounce violence
and accept past agreements, in particular, the
Road Map of the Quartet (the United States,
Russia, the European Union and the United
Nations).

The
hypocrisy is stunning. Obviously, the United
States and Israel do not recognise Palestine or
renounce violence. Nor do they accept past
agreements. While Israel formally accepted the
Road Map, it attached 14 reservations that
eviscerate it. To take just the first, Israel
demanded that for the process to commence and
continue, the Palestinians must ensure full
quiet, education for peace, cessation of
incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other
organisations, and other conditions; and even if
they were to satisfy this virtually impossible
demand, the Israeli cabinet proclaimed that ‘the
Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease
violence and incitement against the
Palestinians.’

Israel’s rejection of the Road Map, with US
support, is unacceptable to the Western
self-image, so it has been suppressed. The facts
finally broke into the mainstream with Jimmy
Carter’s book, ‘Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,’
which elicited a torrent of abuse and desperate
efforts to discredit it.

While
now in a position to crush Gaza, Israel can also
proceed, with US backing, to implement its plans
in the West Bank, expecting to have the tacit
cooperation of Fatah leaders who will be
rewarded for their capitulation. Among other
steps, Israel began to release the funds —
estimated at $600 million — that it had
illegally frozen in reaction to the January 2006
election.

Ex-prime minister Tony Blair is now to ride to
the rescue. To Lebanese political analyst Rami
Khouri, ‘appointing Tony Blair as special envoy
for Arab-Israeli peace is something like
appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief
fireman of Rome.’ Blair is the Quartet’s envoy
only in name. The Bush administration made it
clear at once that he is Washington’s envoy,
with a very limited mandate. Secretary of State
Rice (and President Bush) retain unilateral
control over the important issues, while Blair
would be permitted to deal only with problems of
institution-building.

As
for the short-term future, the best case would
be a two-state settlement, per the international
consensus. That is still by no means impossible.
It is supported by virtually the entire world,
including the majority of the US population. It
has come rather close, once, during the last
month of Bill Clinton’s presidency — the sole
meaningful US departure from extreme
rejectionism during the past 30 years. In
January 2001, the United States lent its support
to the negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that nearly
achieved such a settlement before they were
called off by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

In
their final Press conference, the Taba
negotiators expressed hope that if they had been
permitted to continue their joint work, a
settlement could have been reached. The years
since have seen many horrors, but the
possibility remains. As for the likeliest
scenario, it looks unpleasantly close to the
worst case, but human affairs are not
predictable: Too much depends on will and
choice.

Noam Chomsky is a
professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the author, most
recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest
for Global Dominance.

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